PORT ST. LUCIE — The Port St. Lucie City Council agreed today to accept about $13.5 million in federal dollars to buy foreclosed or abandoned homes in the city.
Council members voted unanimously to participate in the program through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. They praised the move as one that will employee local contractors, while removing blight from the city’s neighborhoods.
“This program really, really excites me,” said Councilwoman Linda Bartz. “I think we have the opportunity to put some local people to work and that’s very important.”
Port St. Lucie is just one of many communities nationwide that was offered federal dollars to buy and redevelop foreclosed properties. HUD divvied up about $3.9 billion approved by Congress earlier this year for communities hard hit by foreclosures; Florida communities were offered more than $541 million.
Port St. Lucie has a foreclosure rate of about 11.5 percent, which is higher than the statewide average of 8 percent, according to HUD.
City officials still are working out the details of their plan, which is due to HUD by Dec. 1. HUD then has three months to respond to the plan and, if approved, the city has 18 months to contracturally obligate the money and four years to spend it.
Houses purchased by the city must be sold to people within income guidelines established by HUD.
City Manager Don Cooper said the program is not meant to prevent foreclosures. It is intended to buy homes that already have gone into foreclosure and been abandoned for 90 days. After purchasing the homes, city officials would hire contractors to repair or replace them and to maintain the property.
“The goal here is to remove as many foreclosed or blighted properties from the city’s inventory as we can,” he said.

Tags: foreclosures, HUD

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Economy, Port St. Lucie, St. Lucie County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.